Deluge
by ssumdaymaybeoneday
Summary: A series of vignettes about Joyce Byers and Jim Hopper following events of the first season. This will be a slow burn and cover both characters' perspectives at different times. Enjoy.
1. The Hospital

The puddle of brackish water could have been avoided. Had Jim Hopper been at all focused on where he was in the moment, he would have looked down as he stepped out from the sleek black car.

Instead the water soaked into his socks, coloring them a muddy brown. Reflexively he shuddered, fumbling for the pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket as his handlers smirked from behind tinted glass in the front seat.

"Yeah, yeah, what're you looking at?"

His words held no bite, just exhaustion and weary acceptance. The passenger-side window slowly rolled down with a mechanical drone.

"You don't have to do this." The man's voice was smooth and calm, with a touch of mirth.

Hopper set his teeth, ignoring his instinct to grind as he accidentally bit down on the cigarette that had already made its way to his lips. He wasn't certain as to how.

"Yeah well," Hopper said while flicking his lighter. Sparks flew but the flame refused to stay lit.

"Goddamn it."

"Allow me," the man said.

A gloved hand reached out of the open window offering the bedraggled officer a light. Hopper begrudgingly leaned over the window in the same awkward fashion that he had been stooping down to fit since an eighth-grade growth spurt — doorways, cars, petite girls at high school dances, he was always a bit too large for wherever he was.

"Thanks," he muttered before taking a long drag and continuing. "Yeah well, you see. I kind of do, have to do this."

"Suit yourself," the man chuckled. "Keep an eye on her for us, will you?" The window whirred shut before the car drove away, leaving Hopper still standing in a puddle in the light of the hospital's brightly lit sign.

"Go to hell," Hopper muttered under his breath as the car pulled away from the curb. Chucking the half-smoked cigarette into the puddle, he ground it into mush with his wet shoe. He wasn't certain what "hell" even meant anymore, having lived through the closest things to it that he could imagine.

The mats at the hospital entrance were rubber, the kind that hardly dried any sort of moisture and instead let out a horrific squeaking noise should anyone attempt to wipe their feet. Hopper smiled nervously at the receptionist, a striking redhead with a body that stretched her uniform tightly in all the right places.

"Sorry."

She waved him off, unconcerned, as if hulking men stood in the doorway sheepishly wiping their feet at four in the morning every day. When he drew closer to the desk, she let out an audible sigh and looked up at him with a bored expression.

"Which patient?" she asked.

"Uh, how did you know?"

Hopper's response was weary and hesitant, the boundaries of his trust in others had been completely shattered, and he now eyed the receptionist — her name tag read "Christina" — with a mixture of caution and suspicion. She sighed again.

"You're here at four in the morning with no injury yourself as far as I can see, and you would have gone straight to the E.R. if you were."

"I'm here to see Joy— I mean, Will Byers. William. Byers," he stuttered.

"Everyone has been in to see him tonight." She then quirked her head and looked at Hopper quizzically. "Is he famous or something? I saw a lot of people in fancy suits in and out of here to see him."

"Something like that, I guess." Hopper said. He refused to let his guard down for even a second with the chance that she too was another trap waiting for him. Christina sighed again and shoved a clipboard at him.

"Write your name, patient, time, and approximate time of stay."

For a moment, Hopper contemplated visiting under a pseudonym. Given how well he was likely to be watched from this point on he quickly realized it was pointless, and quickly scribbled his name down before tossing the clipboard back at her.

"He's on the twelfth floor but the elevator is broken. Sorry about that Mister . . . Hopper." She paused to check his name before finishing her sentence.

"I'll take the stairs then."

Hopper tried to smile nicely at her before leaving. Based on her slightly terrified reaction, it had come out more as a grimace or wince of pain.

He wasn't particularly in the mood for elevators, but taking the stairs required steeling himself in a way that had nothing to do with his lack of physical activity, love handles, or chain smoking habits. The resuscitation of Will Byers had allowed all manner of memories to bubble to the surface of his mind, thoughts of Sarah and other flashes of emotions that he'd prefer to keep buried.

"Plus, they're a goddamn chore," he said aloud to no one, his voice echoing in the stairwell.

He had to duck slightly again through the doorway before making his way down a brightly-lit hallway that was eerily similar to the maze of Hawkins National Laboratory — buzzing fluorescents and a sterile, soapy smell that reminded him of elementary school, or his many trips to hospitals as an adult.

There was no name tag outside of Will Byers room — something that Hopper noted immediately, filing it away in his mind for future reference. Instead, he found the room by noticing the petite woman soundly asleep in the waiting room outside of it. Hopper looked around for any sign of a guard, Hawkins representative, or anything amiss, but there was only Joyce. Drawing closer, he took a moment to take in Joyce Byers face, her entire presence.

Joyce was always nervous, always moving. Throughout the entire experience, Hopper doubted that she had slept, eaten, or done anything other than smoke cigarettes and possibly hit the bottle a few times, although the latter wasn't really a characteristic of Joyce as much as it was of Lonnie Byers, or himself. Now, Joyce slept peacefully, despite her seated position in a hardback chair, and had a slight smile on her face.

Hopper reached over and ran a finger down the side of her cheek before brushing her hair from her forehead. Even his hand made her look tiny in comparison. He smiled. For the first time that day, he allowed himself to relax.

"She's asleep. Finally."

Hopper jumped at the sound of Jonathan Byers' voice. The teen leaned on the waiting room doorway, slouching as he stood with two dripping cups of coffee. Blinking, Hopper quickly withdrew his hand and made an effort to sit up straight in his chair.

"Well, that's good." He shuffled his feet. Still wet from the puddle, they made a squelching sound against the tiled floor.

Jonathan nodded.

"I came to check on your brother," Hopper said slowly.

Without moving his head, Jonathan flicked his eyes towards his mother, and then back at Chief Hopper. He slowly nodded.

"Do you want one? I figured I'd get one for her but . . . " Jonathan's voice trailed off and he finished his sentence with a shrug.

"Sure, kid." Hopper reached out his hand.


	2. Castle Byers

The door was unlocked.

It wasn't the Christmas lights, left on for the duration of her time at Will's bedside, or the hastily-nailed boards across the hole in the side of her house that caught Joyce Byers' attention.

It was that the door was unlocked.

She took in the scene with an odd sense of pride. The Byers house was a museum to her cause, exemplifying that Joyce Byers refused to give up on her son.

It had been three days since she had left the hospital waiting room, and Hop had not-so-subtly implied that she hardly smelled like roses, nearly pushing her out the door with a promise that he'd watch over Will.

For the first time she allowed to see it as Lonnie had, as Jonathan and Hop had before they believed her — black paint smeared on the walls, an awful stench of something burning, light filtering in between the boards from Lonnie's slapdash handiwork, couch cushions thrown to the side, strands of Christmas lights everywhere.

In awe, Joyce Byers slowly walked to the center of her living room and turned around, taking it all in. Sunlit dust drifted in the air, reminiscent of what Will's friends had called "The Upside Down." Coaxed by memory, Joyce coughed softly.

Well of course the door was unlocked.

From what Jonathan had told her, which was admittedly very little, they hadn't exactly had time to worry about things like locking the door, cleaning up the bloodstains, visible on the couch cushions, the rug, and somehow on the flowered wallpaper of her living room walls. She shuddered to think of how it had ended up spattered there.

Joyce hadn't had the time to press Jonathan much, although her stare had been an unspoken pledge that she would return to the subject as soon as Will woke up and things returned to normal.

"Normal."

She spoke aloud to herself. Her voice cracked.

With slow steps she continued to drink in the state of her home. Jonathan's home. Her home. Will's home.

She wouldn't let Will see what had become of their home.

Turning down the hallway to their bedrooms, Joyce bent down and ran her finger along the cool, metal edge of a bear trap. It was exactly where Jonathan had warned her it would be, and somehow still tacky with the blood of the monster that had kidnapped her son. Joyce Byers clenched her fists tightly at her sides and grit her teeth.

No. Will could not see their house like this — a reminder of what they had gone through in his absence, and what he had gone through on the other side.

When Joyce had gotten pregnant, she'd married Lonnie because she had to. When Lonnie had thrown his first punch, after she had looked sideways at his infidelity for so long, she'd taken her boys and left. She'd worked hours upon hours of overtime because she had to. She'd made sure that food was on the table, that the boys were always taken care of because she had to. She'd journeyed to hell and back without losing hope because she had to.

For her, it wasn't a choice. It was her life, their life.

Her eyes finally welled up with tears, not out of sadness or anger but out of exhaustion, relief, and love. They fell on the carpet, mingling with the dark bloodstains.

Rising to her feet, Joyce swiftly walked to cupboard and pulled out a plastic bucket — the blue one that she'd put by Jonathan and Will's bedsides when they were younger and ill with the stomach flu to catch their vomit, the one that Jonathan had most recently filled up with warm water and soap to painstakingly scrub their beat-up car.

She filled it with warm water and soap and went to work.


	3. Porch Light

A loud noise echoed through the forest.

Jim Hopper's body jumped before his sleep-addled mind and his head immediately collided with the interior roof of his truck, his fumbling knees accidentally pressing down on the horn.

That startled him enough to look around, instinctively rubbing the sore spot on his forehead while gripping the steering wheel with his free hand. Righting himself, he sat up and looked around wildly for the source of the sound. What had initially resembled a gunshot in his mind warped into something far worse.

He reached down to turn the key in the ignition when the sound echoed again, coming from a steady, unblinking light in the distance — the Byers' home. Headlights shone in his direction and he put his hands up without thinking, closing his eyes. When he opening them again, green and white spots dazzled his periphery while the whine of an older car and tires grinding against snow and gravel filled his ears.

A car door.

Jonathan Byers' car door to be precise.

Hopper grabbed a fistful of his own hair, shaking his head in disgust. A small laugh bubbled up from his throat. When it managed to escape his lips moments later, it was dry and mirthless.

This wasn't the first time this had happened. It wasn't even the third or the fourth time.

The ceaseless chirping of Will Byers' voice reached his ears as the young boy accosted his older brother with what Hopper could only imagine was something to do with space wizards or fantasy monsters that the boy somehow hadn't tired of despite his ordeal. Jonathan's low, short responses didn't do the older boy's caring demeanor justice. The picture Hopper painted of them in his mind was one of Jonathan slinging his arm around his younger brother, showing his affection while instinctively shielding him from harm as the two meandered up their steps.

He hadn't met up with Joyce since he had forced her to go home and change although, from that moment onward, he had seen her every day. Hopper had assumed that freshening up would do her a bit of good. Desperately, a part of him had hoped that she would be able to relax for a few precious seconds before returning to haunt her son's bedside.

When she hadn't returned to the hospital within a few hours of leaving, he had rushed to her house, leaving Jonathan to watch over the sleeping Will while mumbling something about an emergency call as he had jammed his hat on his head and stalked out of the waiting room. There was a light on outside as he'd pulled up her driveway. Ever cautious, he had slunk out of his truck and slowly crept up onto her porch. The door had been open.

Illuminated by sunlight was Joyce Byers. It was enough to make Hopper's breath hitch in his throat with a soft gasp. Based on her attire, she had yet to change but remained gorgeous, tiny, and somehow furious as she scrubbed the carpet violently, unaware of Hopper's presence.

Upon seeing her, Hopper had slowly backed out of her home. He didn't belong there, he realized. Whatever tenuous connection they had created throughout Will's disappearance — Hopper's admission of her honesty, their trip to visit Terry Ives, and his large hands, framing her face as gently as they could with the cool plastic of a hazmat suit in between them — had snapped.

From that day onward, he had only slept a day in his own house. Unlike Joyce, whose tireless effort had transformed her home from a museum to Will's disappearance and the nebulous Upside Down, Hopper had yet to address the debris strewn about — crushed lightbulbs, stuffing from couch cushions, everything he had ripped apart himself to find their hidden microphone.

Hopper's days began as they had before the incident. He and Flo had picked up their morning banter. Hawkins had remained blissfully quiet, forcibly so as the powers that be had publicly removed themselves from the spotlight, even if very little had actually been resolved.

For all the town of Hawkins knew, Hopper had happily settled back into his role as the lazy, small-town cop — the ex-football prospect gone to seed, now chained to the community of his childhood by circumstance.

Yet, at the end of every day, Hopper drove to the Byers' home — the cabin of his truck more of a home to him than his house as he looked at the steady porch light in the distance.


End file.
